A Latinist, Schiesaro becomes the 24th Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore and the eighth from the Humanities. His term will run from May 29, 2025 to May 28, 2031.

 

Pisa, November 27, 2024 – The Scuola Normale Superiore has appointed its new Director for the 2025–2031 term. Alessandro Schiesaro, Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the Normale and currently serving as Vice Director, will be taking over from Luigi Ambrosio at the end of May 2025. In the last few weeks, Professor Schiesaro has presented the proposal for his mandate to the electoral body, focusing on internationalization, research development and the enhancement of teaching. His proposal received broad consensus across the institution.

The threshold required for election was 53.25 weighted votes. Professor Schiesaro received 62.55 weighted votes—73% of the total—comfortably surpassing the required quorum to qualify for election.

Born in Savona in 1963, Schiesaro was a student of both the undergraduate and PhD courses at the Scuola Normale between 1982 and 1989. He has spent extended periods abroad for research and teaching, completing advanced studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Oxford, and holding academic positions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Princeton University, King’s College London and the University of Manchester, where he served as Dean of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures from 2016 to 2021. In Italy, he has taught at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and has served as Director of the Sapienza School for Advanced Studies. From 2008 to 2015, he coordinated the Technical Secretariat for Research Policy at the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). He has also been a member of the European Commission’s High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education and of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO.
 
Schiesaro is the twenty-fourth Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore since its foundation in 1810 by Napoleonic decree, and the eighth from the Faculty of Humanities. He follows in the footsteps of renowned scholars such as Ranieri Sbragia (historian of theology), Pasquale Villari (historian), Alessandro D’Ancona (literary scholar and philologist), Giovanni Gentile (philosopher), Luigi Russo (literary theorist and critic), Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (historian of antiquity), and Salvatore Settis (art historian).